


Little Fella

by Tb_Rails90



Category: TUGS (TV)
Genre: Fluff, Help, Human forms, Lost Child, Warrior finds a kid and doesn't know what to do, just warrior doing warrior things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-17
Updated: 2019-06-17
Packaged: 2020-05-13 08:06:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,566
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19247182
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tb_Rails90/pseuds/Tb_Rails90
Summary: Warrior finds a kid alone on a beach, with no parents in sight. He does his best to find his parents and keep his spirits up.





	Little Fella

**Author's Note:**

> The tugs have human forms in this one. Just a silly thing I shat out this afternoon, I was feeling bad and needed some happy Warrior. Enjoy!

Festival days were always a fun time. At the beginning of summer, Bigg City would have a “Summerfest” for four days to welcome incoming tourists that made their way in flocks from the ocean liners. It was an important time for the city’s local shops, and it was equally important to keep the walkways near the harbour looking nice- a job that Warrior took on with immense pride. Every few hours he would go around the docks near the festival and pick up the overflowing garbage bags from the side of the pier. He would do the dirty work during the day, and then spend the rest of the evening listening to the live music and generally goofing off with the others.  
One such evening, around the end of the third festival day, the sun was still rather high up when Warrior finished his rounds. When he got back to the dock, Captain Star had an odd surprise for them- they were let off for the rest of the day, as were the Zeros. As they all cheered, the Captain gave the excited fleet strict instructions about interacting with the public- and to “keep the rivalry out of the streets.”  
“Where’s the fun in that?” Big Mac joked, and Star raised an eyebrow. “We don’t need to cause other people grief. Trust me, the less street wars we have right now, the better.”  
“So long as they ain’t startin’ nothin’, we should be right fine,” Sunshine piped up.  
“Just don’t kill anybody. Use common sense. If you see anything, you know where the police stations are.”  
“Yes sir,” came the reply, and soon the office was empty.

Warrior was walking with Ten Cents and Sunshine. The others had split off to go look at shops, while the other three went towards a small park where the performers were. They wandered over to where a group of children sat in the grass, their parents behind them as they watched a man bustle about on a small, wooden stage.  
“Whaddaya think they’re looking at?” Asked Warrior.  
“The guy up there,” Sunshine said. “I think he’s a magician.”  
The man in question was crouched low, talking to the children near the front. Suddenly, he said some odd jumble of words, outstretched his arms, and an explosion of feathers erupted from his sleeves. Ten Cents yelped as two doves came streaking towards him, and he batted at them as they flapped around his head. The crowd laughed and clapped for the magician, but Sunshine and Warrior were absolutely rolling.

“Ey, thanks for the help, fellas,” Ten Cents grouched, while Sunshine picked the feathers off of his back.   
“Hey, look on the bright side,” Sunshine said. “You didn’t get shat on this time.”  
“This time?!” Warrior laughed harder. Ten Cents sighed and rolled his eyes. They watched the rest of the performance, and then the children began clearing out. The three wandered around some food vendors for a while, before Ten Cents and Sunshine wanted to head out to see Billy. “You sure you’ll be okay here?”  
“Oh yeah, I’ll be good,” Warrior replied. “I gotta go on a garbage round soon anyway.”  
“Aight, we’ll see you later, Warrior!” Sunshine called, hopping into his wheelhouse. The two took off, leaving Warrior to sit by himself.  
He was already very tired from his garbage runs, and he drifted off, resting against the edge of his hull. He listened to the breeze that rustled the leaves on the trees. The whooshing noise relaxed him further, until the whooshing turned to mewling.  
He popped one eye open. Wind doesn’t make that noise, he thought. He sat up groggily, listening again.  
Indeed, the wind whooshed, and then sobbed. Warrior could see a bright red shirt behind a set of bushes, next to where he was moored.  
Warrior crept on his toes towards the bushes. He peered over them, seeing a mop of brown hair and a red shirt, crumpled in the dirt and sniffling.  
“Ey, little fella,” he called, “what’re you doing here, so close to the water?”  
The child behind the bushes stared at him with teary eyes, wiping his nose on his sleeve and fiddling with some rocks on the ground.  
Warrior looked around. He was sure a child as small as this should have a parent or two around to help it. “Where’d your parents go?”  
The child sniffled and began crying again. “I dunno,” he mewled.  
Warrior felt horrible for the kid. He knelt next to him, keeping a bit of distance between them. He was always told to be wary of small children, at least, when he was on the water. “Were they here a second ago?”  
The child shook his head.  
“When were they here?”  
“Never.”  
Warrior’s eyes went wide and began to panic. What did that mean? Never as in not right now, or never as in not in this child’s whole life? “Uuh, alrighty then.”  
He was drawing blanks here. The others weren’t going to be back for a while, and it was getting darker.  
He patted his lap to chase away the awkward silence. “This dirt isn’t very comfy, is it? It hurts my knees.”  
The kid looked at his knees, which were dirty and had little pebbles stuck to them. “Uh-huh.”  
Warrior stood up. “Uuh, how ‘bout we sit over here for a second?” He pointed to his hull. “Then you can tell me how you got here.”

The child nodded, following Warrior to his hull. He gently picked up the child and set him on the edge. “Alrighty. So your parents, they weren’t here?”  
“No,” replied the child.  
Warrior looked around, going down the little path that led to the pebbly beach, where he moored. After he walked a bit, he began calling out.  
“Hey! Hello! S’cuse me!” He yelled. “Your child is over here! He’s crying a lot! He’s got a red shirt on!”  
He called out anything he could come up with, in every direction he could think of. He walked back to his hull, stumped. He looked at the child, who was fiddling with a coil of rope sitting on the bow. Hopping back on deck, he sighed deeply. “I’m sorry, little fella, I can’t see nobody nowhere.”  
The child looked down at the rope, and Warrior felt his heart sink. “Hey, hey, it’s alright, they’re 'prolly lookin’ for you, right now.”  
“Where?”  
“Uuh,” Warrior wasn’t sure what that meant. “Prolly where they thought they saw you last. Did they see you here, on the beach?”  
“No.”  
“Where did you see them last?”  
“That way,” the kid said, pointing vaguely in some direction. “But then there was a bird.”  
“A bird?”  
“Yeah, a real big bird.”  
Warrior smiled. “How big?”  
“Thiiiiis big,” the kid said, holding his arms out wide. “It was white and had big wings.”  
Warrior sat criss-cross next to the child. “And where was it?”  
“Over there,” the kid pointed to the bushes, “and it was funny when it flew away. And then I got here.”  
It dawned on Warrior that they seagulls liked to patrol the food courts for scraps. The kid must have chased them until he ended up here.  
“We’re an awful long way from the festival,” Warrior said. “And it’s getting dark.”  
“Yeah,” said the kid. “I want my mom.”  
“I know, but she’s not here.”  
“Please, I want my mom!”  
“Okay, okay,” Warrior tried to soothe the child as he was thrown into another crying fit. He looked out towards the harbor. Someone he knew should be out there, he’d just go around and ask.  
“Tell you what,” Warrior said. “How about I take you to the garbage dump? You could meet my friends, they’d know what to do.”  
The kid nodded, and Warrior guided the child to a metal stand where he put his ropes. “Now, hold on tight here, and don’t move none, till I say.”  
“Okay,” said the kid. “Is it fast?”  
“I can be,” Warrior said proudly, “if I rev up enough steam.” He quickly ascended the ladder and entered his wheelhouse, and his face appeared on the front of it. As he started his engine, it dawned on him again that the child has probably never seen a vessel shift before- he knew it was a scary thing to some people. He nervously looked down at the child, and to his relief, he wasn’t screaming. He was giggling at the large face on the wheelhouse. Warrior cocked an eyebrow. “What’re you laughing at?”  
The child giggled more, and Warrior shrugged it off.

He took the quickest route he knew to the city dump. Warrior checked on the kid often- he looked like he was having a good time. The bangs that once hung over his eyes were now blown back from his face by the wind, and he was trying to look everywhere at once.  
“You okay down there?”  
The kid looked back and nodded. “Good, I can see the dump from here.”  
As he pulled up to the dump, he bumped Lord Stinker and made him cry out. “Warrior!”  
“Sorry your Lordship.”  
The child giggled at the sight of the barge with a peg on his nose. “What are you doing here so late, Warrior?”  
“Well, I have a bit of a problem,” he said nervously, looking down at his bow. Lord Stinker followed his gaze, and when he saw the child, his eyes went wide.  
“How did you get one of those?!”  
“I didn’t, he was lost, and crying, so I thought you might know what to do,” Warrior explained. “Is Mr. O. here?”  
“No, clocked out an hour ago.” Lord Stinker watched the child as he scampered away, towards Warrior’s midsection. “Hey, what’d I say about moving?” Warrior reprimanded.  
The child smiled mischievously and sat near the bottom of the deck ladder, grabbing the bottom rung. “Smells bad.”  
“Well! I never,” Lord Stinker scoffed. “I don’t know much about children, but I know for sure he shouldn’t be here! It’s dangerous for him!”  
“Where should I go, then?”  
“Ooh, I dunno…” Lord Stinker mused for a second. “I know Hercules should be coming back in tonight around six. He talked about an injured tramper. He’d probably know better than me on dealing with the public, I just deal with their refuse.”  
“Right,” Warrior said, setting off for Lucky’s Yard. “I’ll do that, then, thanks!”  
“Good luck,” Lord Stinker called, and the child waved at him.

“Right, little fella, Hercules is real big, but he’s real nice, too.” The kid nodded and stared at the incoming tramper.  
“You see the guy next to that ship? That’s him. He’s one of our strongest guys, and he goes all the way out to the middle of the ocean.”  
“How far?”  
“Reeeaally far.”  
“Whoa.” The kid scooted closer to the edge of Warrior’s bow, watching as Hercules guided the tramper to the dock.  
“Does he see whales? And dolphins?”  
“Oh yeah, they show up sometimes,” Warrior replied. “He loves whale watching.”  
“Has he seen a sea monster?”  
“Err, no, I don’t think so. What monster did you have in mind?”  
“Big.”  
“Big?” Warrior repeated. “Big as me?”  
“Yeah,” the kid said. “With a loooot of tentacles.”  
“Sounds scary.”  
“It is!” The kid said, and he began going off about what Warrior assumed was the legend of the Kraken. A crisp whistle startled the kid and he jumped up. “What’s this about a monster, Warrior?”  
“Oh! Hercules,” Warrior started, and the kid darted behind his midsection. Hercules caught sight of this and raised an eyebrow. “Who’s with you?”  
“Uuh, just a little buddy.”  
Hercules chuckled. “It better not be another cat, the Captain might throttle you.”  
“No, no, it’s a different kind of buddy this time.” Warrior turned to the child, who was peeking out from behind the metal wall. He encouraged the child to step out, and Hercules’s eyes went wide.  
“Warrior! Why do you-” Hercules changed his tone when he remembered that there was a child present. He whispered, “why do you have a CHILD on deck with you?!”  
“He was lost! He was completely alone on a beach! I couldn’t just leave him there!”  
“So you took him on walkabout?”  
“We didn’t walk any,” Warrior replied matter-of-factly. “Just went to the dump and then to you.”  
Had Hercules been in human form, he would have been rubbing his temples. He looked down at the child, who was staring at him. He smiled awkwardly before looking around.  
“Do you know his name?”  
“...no?”  
“You just picked him up and didn’t ask his name?!”  
“I didn’t think to ask! He don’t say more than three words at once.”  
Hercules bit his lip nervously. “Right, hang on. S’cuse me, little one,” he called to the kid. “Do you have a name?”  
“Yeah.”  
“What is your name, then?”  
“Marcus. You spell it, ‘M’ ‘A’ ‘R’ ‘C’ ‘U’ ‘S’.”  
Warrior smiled. “That’s a neat name. My name is Warrior.”  
“Waaaarrior,” Marcus repeated. Hercules pursed his lips. “You didn’t even tell him yours?”  
Warrior realized the gravity of the situation and went pale. Hercules gently nudged him. “Alright, alright,” he soothed, “at least he’s safe. Now that we’ve got his name, you can take him to the Star pier. I think Star is still there, he’s not one for festival crowds.”  
“Why do you have glasses?” Marcus asked, and Hercules ignored the question. “We’re going to take you to our pier, okay? Our captain will help find your parents.”  
As they steamed off, Marcus’s face fell. It was as if the mention of his parents brought him back to reality, and soon he began to cry again. Hercules was alarmed. “Why is he crying?” He whispered.  
“He’s sad, Herc.”  
“I get that, but- agh, nevermind. We’re almost there.”  
Warrior gulped. “Hey, Marcus, little fella,” he said gently. Marcus wouldn’t stop. He looked at the Star Pier in front of him and cried even harder.  
“I’ll go in,” Herc said, “and you calm him.”

Warrior clamored from his wheelhouse and kneeled next to Marcus. “Why are you crying?”  
The child shook his head.  
“Is it because it’s dark?”  
He nodded.  
“Does it look scary?”  
He nodded again.  
“Well, that’s easy!” Warrior exclaimed, walking to the midsection and pulling a string, flooding his deck with a warm, yellow light. “Not so scary now, is it?” He said, sitting back down.  
Marcus scooted closer to Warrior. “I want my mom.”  
“I know.”  
“Where she go?”  
“I don’t know.”  
They sat in silence for a while, with Warrior internally panicking as he watched shadows pass by the office windows. Suddenly, two tiny arms wrapped around his waist, and he looked down to see Marcus clinging to him.  
Warrior carefully reached an arm around the child, patting his back. “I know what it’s like to be scared.”  
“Yeah?”  
“Yeah,” He repeated. “One time, I was out at night, and it was real dark, like this. I thought I saw ghosts- I nearly wrecked myself.”  
“Ghosts?” Marcus quivered, and Warrior started. “No, no no! They weren’t real, they were just other boats that looked like ghosts. Wait-”  
Marcus smiled a little bit. “Sounds funny. Did you scream?”  
Warrior blinked. “I did yell a bit, maybe not scream-”  
“Like a girl?”  
“Now, hang on a minute there.” Warrior was relieved to see that Marcus was loosening up.  
“I’m scared,” Marcus said, “but I’m not gonna scream.”  
“That’s good!” Warrior replied. “That’s real brave of you.”  
“Brave of me?”  
“Yeah. You’re brave enough, I think, to face the ocean.”  
“Like you?” Marcus asked, as Hercules and Captain Star ran to Warrior. He felt warm.  
“Yeah, I suppose like me.”

Captain Star paced in front of Warrior as he sat on a wooden chair in front of the Captain’s desk. Marcus was in the small lounge, a cup of cocoa in his hands as he gently kicked his legs around. The rest of the fleet was back by now, and they were oogling over Marcus. Meanwhile, Captain Star leaned on the desk in a panic.  
“Warrior, what you did was extremely, extremely dangerous. He could have gotten hurt out there.”  
Warrior looked down sheepishly. “Sorry.”  
"Think about what could have happened if someone saw it!" Captain Star hissed quietly. "A random person walking up to a kid, putting them in a boat, and running off? That's a terrifying thought to any parent."  
"I didn't mean no harm, sir, honest, I'd never-"  
"I know you'd never, Warrior, and I'm glad you kept him safe." He put a hand on his shoulder and smiled slightly. "But other people might not know you were trying to help. They could have reported a kidnapping."  
Warrior gulped, and felt his blood run cold.  
"But now, we have to file a report with the authorities." He closed his eyes for a moment, as if the scolding had taxed him. He drummed his fingers on the table and began to write something on a notepad.  
“Where did you find him?”  
“On a small pebble beach, about ten minutes from the dump.”  
“Did you go anywhere else?”  
“Just to Lucky’s, to find Herc. He never left my deck.”  
The Captain sighed, and pulled at his face. He dialed a number on the telephone, while Warrior waved at Marcus in the other room. The little boy waved back with a cheeky grin.  
After a moment, the captain put the phone down and put a hand on his chest. “The police have contacted the parents. They’ll be here in about half an hour to pick up the child.”  
Warrior also sighed in relief. “I was beginning to think he didn’t have parents, the way he said things.”  
“Children can say some funny things, yes,” Captain Star said. “But, as crazy as tonight has turned, you’ve been able to keep him calm. I’m proud of you for that. It’s… definitely more than any of us could do." He chuckled weakly. "Just... don’t go bringing random kids to the office again, okay?”

Captain Star relieved Warrior, and he walked to the lounge with the others. Marcus smiled at him as he stood in the doorway.  
“You’re all over the walls!” The boy exclaimed.  
“I’m what?”  
“You’re here,” the child pointed to a picture hanging on the wall, “and here, and here, and here.”  
“Oh, yeah, the fleet pictures,” Warrior fumbled with picking the picture off the hook above him, and handed the photo to Marcus to look at. “Yeah, that’s us.”  
“And there’s you,” he said, pointing to the grainy photo.  
Ten Cents was amused by this, and leaned over to peek at the photo. He pointed to himself. “And who’s that?”  
Marcus looked up, and stared for a moment. “Tha’s you!”  
That earned an endearing laugh from the group. Marcus pointed to the picture and back to the fleetmates. “Tha’s you, tha’s you, and…” he pointed to the photo of Top Hat, “...he looks like my grandma!”  
Top Hat nearly did a spittake, and that sent the team into fits of laughter. It was such an innocent statement, too, that Top Hat couldn’t help but grin a little bit. Okay, maybe he chuckled a little. But he would never admit it.

Warrior heard a knock at the door, and turned to Marcus. “Ey little buddy, I think your mom’s here.”  
Captain Star answered the door to find a police officer and a teary-eyed mother behind him. “Good evening sir, we believe you-”  
“Is my Marcus with you?!” the mother rasped. The Captain nodded and showed them in.  
It was a teary reunion, the mother scooping Marcus up and holding him tight. The other tugs looked on with a smile, as the mother whispered “I’m so glad you’re safe,” and “never, ever run off like that again.”  
“I’m sorry,” Marcus repeated, over and over. “But Warrior was nice. He was nice to me, mom.”  
“A warrior? A warrior protected you?” The mother’s eyes filled with tears again. Captain Star shifted uncomfortably away to talk to the policeman.  
“No, just Warrior. He’s over ‘dere,” Marcus pointed at the tug like it was common knowledge.  
“Oh, me? Nah. I just found him.”  
That didn’t stop Marcus’s mom from walking over to him and hugging him tightly. “If you ever need anything, let me know. I’ll do it in a heartbeat.” Warrior didn’t know what to say, but smiled politely and released the hug. The mother took Marcus’s hand and made their way to the door.  
Little Marcus looked back before he left the office. “Buh-bye.”  
“Bye, Marcus,” the fleet chimed in, as the door shut.

The next day, Captain Star had a mandatory afternoon meeting about “what to do if you find a lost child.”  
“So, if a child is alone with no parent in sight, you stay in the spot you found them, or…”  
“Go to the nearest public area or police station,” droned the fleet.  
“And what do you ask them?”  
“Name, parent’s name…” and so went the recitations. Warrior flushed deeply at his lapse in judgement, but he knew the Captain was proud of him. And little Marcus was quite a cute kid. Maybe he’d see him again next festival, or maybe when he grew older he’d see him walk to the school down the street, or…  
“Warrior? Warrior, pay attention. You have garbage detail to finish.”  
“Oh! Yes sir, right away, sir.”


End file.
